It's a turkey hunting addiction

It's a turkey hunting addiction

You might say that last week in the woods amounted to the proverbial cup half-empty and half-full.

It turned out to be a full cup for ruffed grouse and continued to be a half-cup for turkey gobblers.

Here’s how it went. According to my pedometer and aching legs, so far in the month of September and the first two days of October, I registered about 30 miles of walking old logging roads, snowmobile trails and over hill and dale through woods thick and thin.

I finally got lucky last Friday and found a ruffed grouse that just begged me to take a shot at. That was a first for my season. Oh, I have flushed a number of grouse — still called partridge in my antiquated old-timer’s mind — but with leaves thicker than a springer spaniel’s hair in the woods through which I had roamed this fall, I had yet to fire a single shot at a partridge. The lone bird I flushed last Saturday must have been told several times over how poor a shot I am on exploding flushing birds. It flew straight down the logging grade and at a pace of 34 yards a load of No. 6 pellets caught up to it.

When I cleaned the bird later, I discovered just two BBs managed to hit it, but they hit in the right place to do the job. I’d like to think it was pure skill on my part not to center my shot directly on it, thereby preserving every bit of breast meat on it.

I can tell you, and my wife will back me up, that later that evening for our supper we had absolutely delicious roasted partridge, wild rice baked with chopped out-of-the-garden carrots and onions and sweet applesauce. Ah, but it had been much too long since the last time partridge was on my menu.

More than anything, in all my miles of rambling cross-country this fall, I have desired to get myself a big tom turkey. I have come upon several “herds” of turkeys, but so far all that have been found were hens and poults.

I am holding out for a big tom, one of which will hopefully somehow stumble across me during a hunt sooner or later. Wild turkey for Thanksgiving dinner is my goal.

Speaking of turkey hunts, I handled failure on my very first turkey hunt, which was a spring affair in the woods of Missouri way back in the early 80s. I went home empty-handed that year, but a turkey fanatic had definitely been born.

On the long drive home with my cousin, I probably wore out his ear with turkey hunting talk, beginning with the (mis)adventures I experienced during our week at turkey camp and the extreme anticipation I had for returning the next spring for another go at them.

I did return to Missouri the next spring, and faced with another failure, despite several close calls with gobblers, my first ever made the mistake of giving me another chance on my last day of hunting. He came home with me.

Since those first two years of turkey hunting in Missouri, I have become a true wild turkey addict.

Up until two or three years ago, my addiction was confined to spring hunts, a couple more in Missouri, in Illinois, in Tennessee, in Kentucky, and of course, once wild turkeys were introduced and grown into huntable numbers, in Wisconsin.

As is only correct and rightful, I both felt true joy on some of those hunts and experienced abject failure on others. Truth is, failure to bring home a turkey or not has always played a very minor part in those hunts.

I am truly an addict of spring hunting, a time when the hunt all comes down mostly to skill in calling amorous gobblers with seductive hens’ come-hither yelps, clucks and cackles.

I might add that no matter whether my hunts each year ended with a turkey to carry out of the woods or a full year ahead with only store-bought turkey to tide me over, I considered each and every hunt to be one that would live forever in my memory bank.

Before my first hunt, I listened over and over to an old-school cassette tape recorded by an old turkey hunting expert who correctly said that turkey hunting would become a true addiction.

He was absolutely correct. Especially was he correct for those exhilarating spring hunts when success could be found in a tense moment’s time or could end with any number of heart-stopping close calls but no bird in the hand.

Well, time will still tell if this fall’s hunt will end on a high note with a gobbler headed for the Thanksgiving dinner table or with only memories of exciting meet-ups with turkeys who still continue to roam our Northwoods countryside.

Either way, I will continue to consider myself one of the luckiest guys on earth just to be able to continue the addiction that turkey hunting has been throughout my hunting life for over 30 years.